[Info-vax] New CEO of VMS Software

[Dan Cross]

In article <un81en$l6e$2 at dont-email.me>,
Lawrence D'Oliveiro  <ldo at nz.invalid> wrote:
>On Fri, 5 Jan 2024 03:09:37 -0000 (UTC), Dan Cross wrote:
>
>> I think, again, you are talking at cross-purposes: my suspicion is that
>> Arne is referring to a VMS compatibility layer built on top of Linux,
>> not the effort of porting VMS to x86_64.
>
>I thought I made it pretty clear early on that I was only talking about 
>porting across userland executables and DCL command procedures--just the 
>parts of VMS that users care about, nothing more.

That would necessarily entail dragging in much of the rest of
the operating system.  Which isn't to say that it couldn't be
done, but your, "I'm only..." pseudo-subset appears to be a
suggestion borne of ignorance of what's actually involved.

>> That said, VMS was not originally written for portability and wasn't
>> ported to anything other than successive version of the VAX for the
>> first 10 or so years it existed ...
>
>And being typical of proprietary software, think of the layers of cruft 
>the code will have accumulated, first in the move to Alpha, then Itanium, 
>and now AMD64. All without ever really becoming a fully 64-bit OS.

You are, once again, speculating from a position of ignorance.

Consider that for both the VAX _and_ Alpha, DEC was able to
shape the design of the hardware _and_ of VMS simultaneously to
match one another.  There is a big difference between "cruft"
and deep design decisions that impact portability to different
architectures that were not nearly so tightly coupled with the
software being ported.

>> Linux was ported to the Alpha pretty early on (sponsored by DEC; thanks
>> Mad Dog). So Linux filed off a lot of portability sharp edges for the
>> machines at the time pretty early on, when it was still pretty small;
>> VMS not so much.
>
>Which is reinforcing my point, is it not? That Linux stands a good chance 
>of being able to take on enough of a VMS layer to make VMS itself 
>unnecessary.

No, it isn't.  At least not for those who aren't confused.  It
is a comparison of very different things.  Your point is simply
unfounded speculation based on fan-boyism and lack of technical
depth.

	- Dan C.